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Thomas Jerome Schaefer

Thomas Jerome Schaefer is an American mathematician.

Last revised
Jul 27, 2026
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≈ 1 min
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Thomas Jerome Schaefer
Alma materUniversity of California, Berkeley
Known forSchaefer's dichotomy theorem
Scientific career
FieldsComputational complexity theory,
Game theory
InstitutionsUniversity of California, Berkeley
ThesisThe Complexity of Some Two-Person Perfect-Information Games (1978)
Richard M. Karp

Thomas Jerome Schaefer is an American mathematician.

He obtained his Ph.D. in December 1978 from the University of California, Berkeley, where he worked in the Department of Mathematics. His Ph.D. advisor was Richard M. Karp.1234

He is well-known for his dichotomy theorem, stating that any problem generalizing Boolean satisfiability in a certain way is either in the complexity class P or is NP-complete.5

References

References

  1. Thomas Jerome Schaefer at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  2. "Thomas Jerome Schaefer | Department of Mathematics at University of California Berkeley".
  3. Thomas J. Schaefer (1978). "On the Complexity of Some Two-Person Perfect-Information Games". Journal of Computer and System Sciences. 16 (2): 185–225. doi:10.1016/0022-0000(78)90045-4. MR 0490917.
  4. Thomas J. Schaefer (1976). "Complexity of Decision Problems Based on Finite Two-Person Perfect-Information Games". Eighth Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing. ACM. pp. 41–49. MR 0451853.
  5. Schaefer, Thomas J. (1978). "The complexity of satisfiability problems" (PDF). Proc. 10th Ann. ACM Symp. on Theory of Computing. pp. 216–226. MR 0521057.